MG enthusiasts?

"I noticed recently a logo on my next-door neighbour’s van indicating that he was an MG enthusiast. I found the idea of an MG enthusiast an intriguing concept, particularly because I would have thought that they were rather few and far between. There certainly aren't many in the teaching profession! 

So, I asked him about these MG enthusiasts and I discovered that there were more of them around than we might expect. I learnt that MG enthusiasts tended to be rather reactionary individuals, a bit right wing politically, wedded to traditional ways of doing things,  dedicated to a way of life fifty years out of date, motivated by nostalgia and memories of life when they were young, committed to the restoration of a vehicle that has been out of production in this country for years, and happy to drive and preserve something that ignores the computer-based technology of the 21st century - but also excited to know that the object of their desire is still in production … in Shanghai!"

The above was my introduction to a talk about the new primary mathematics curriculum last week to a conference at UEA Norwich. I wanted to make clear at the outset that I was not an MG enthusiast, even though I was going to go on to identify some good things in MG's new curriculum (more of that in a later post on this blog).

Unfortunately, some members of my audience missed the subtlety of what I was saying (initially) and had to have it explained to them later!